In this video Jonathan Cronin walks through a complete case study of acquiring, renovating, and selling a 96‑unit garden‑style apartment complex in Macon, Georgia. He purchased the property off‑market for $4.36 million with zero personal cash, added $373 k in improvements, and financed the deal with $3.84 million debt and $1.1 million equity from limited partners (LPs). By structuring the syndication so the GP (operator) contributed only work and received 83.5 % ownership while LPs received a 10 % preferred return and 16.5 % ownership, Cronin was able to increase occupancy from 68 % to near‑full, raise rents to market, and improve the asset’s net operating income. Fifteen months later the property was appraised and under contract at $7.37 million, creating $2.43 million of equity. He explains the value‑add model, the importance of NOI‑based valuation, the investor return calculations, and why the deal was ultimately taken back from a sale contract due to rising interest rates. The video ends with a call to a free training on syndication, capital raising, and deal underwriting.
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So I bought a 96-unit apartment complex for $4.36 million using $0 from my bank account. 15 months later, it was worth $7.37 million, creating $2.4 million in equity. But I don't want to just show you the win. What I want to do in this video is walk you through the entire thing— how we found the deal, how we structured the deal, what the property actually looked like when we took it over, and what we had to fix and what the numbers look like from the day we closed to 15 months later when we went to sell the property, because most people are just showing you the highlight reel. I'm going to show you the entire game. All right. So let's start from the beginning. This property is in Macon, Georgia, 96 units, 2-story garden-style apartments. When we found it, it was sitting around 68% occupied. Okay. That means almost a third of the units were empty. And I want to talk more about that for just a second, because a lot of investors would look at that 68% and walk away, right? High vacancy feels like a red flag, but in value-add multifamily, high vacancy can actually be the opportunity. The question is, why is it vacant and can you actually fix it? Now, when you're a newer investor, you also have to keep in mind, you don't want too high of vacancy because you are taking on more risk and you have a longer wait time getting to the cash flow positive. And many things can go wrong when you're in that waiting period. But in this specific case, the answer was yes. The property wasn't vacant because the market was bad. There's a key distinction. It was vacant because it was being mismanaged. The rents were below market rate. The units had been updated and the previous ownership wasn't running a tight operation. They were to keep taking their eye off the ball. And that's exactly the kind of deal we look for. Now, how do we find this deal? This was an off-market deal. All right. That's very important. Most newer investors are wasting their time looking at LoopNet and CREXi, and it takes years for them to actually find something that pencils or at least able to attract investors. Right. And off-market deals could be direct-to-seller, pocket listings from a broker. And this specific deal was a pocket listing from a broker. Fun fact, probably 70% or more of all deals that brokers transact are done off market, or at least they never hit the public platform. It is all about calling sellers directly and building relationships with everyone in the market. Okay, in fact, we have a whole team of VAs, virtual assistants out of the Philippines that we pay about $4 or $5 an hour that call sellers for us every day, all day. This has actually become so effective for us that our members in our group have asked us to do it for them. Right. And so we manage around 100 VAs right now. Pretty wild. So here's what the deal actually looked like. Acquisition purchase price was $4.36 million. We put in $373,000 in improvements and had $207,000 in acquisition costs. Okay. So total cost basis going in was right at $4.94 million. On the funding side, $3.84 million in debt, $1.1 million in equity from our limited partners. And that equity covered everything. We put in $0 of our own money and still owned 83.5% of the deal. Now, I want to explain how that works, because this is the part that confuses most people. In a syndication, you as the operator, the person who found the deal, negotiated the deal, arranged the financing, and is going to actually execute the business plan— you contribute the work, your investors contribute the capital. In exchange, they get what we call a preferred return and also an ownership stake. We offered our limited partners a 10% preferred return paid quarterly and 16.5% ownership in the deal. The other 83.5% was ours, so we earned that with $0 out of pocket. So close the deal, 68% occupied, 96 units, and now the work starts. The business plan was straightforward: stabilize the occupancy, renovate the units and bring the rents up to market. That's it. No complicated strategy, just execution. We went in, we started turning the vacant units, cleaning them up, making the improvements that needed to be made, and then leasing them back up to qualified tenants. All right. At the same time, leases renewed on occupied units. So we were able to renovate those too and then bring the rents up. The improvements we made totaled around $373,000 across the property. That covered unit renovations, exterior work, and anything that needed to be addressed from our due diligence walkthrough, right, from the— during the contract. So here's something I want to take a minute to explain because it's the reason we were so confident going into this deal. Apartments, they're not valued the way houses are. A house is worth whatever a comparable house down the street sold for. An apartment complex is valued based on its income, specifically its net operating income. All right. You take the NOI divided by the cap rate. That equals your value. That's the whole equation. What does that mean? When you increase the income, you directly increase the value of the property. And that's exactly what we did. All right. We bought this property at $4.36 million. We put $373,000 in improvements, brought the occupancy up, raised the rents to where the market actually was. And what it supported. And 15 months later, the property appraised and went under contract for $7.37 million, $2.43 million in equity creation. That's not from the market going up. That's from us doing the work, forcing the appreciation, the value-add model. You're not betting on appreciation, you're creating it. So within 15 months, the property went under contract for $7.37 million. We ended up mutually deciding to break the contract when interest rates went up and we took the property back over to further improve the property. We ended up replacing the management company with in-house management. Now that's for another video I'll probably put out here shortly, but here's how that broke down for everyone involved. First, our limited partner, the investors who put in the $1.1 million for the down payment, they had earned about $137,000 in preferred returns over the whole period of 15 months. Plus at the refinance or this contract that would have been $376,000 in equity at sale. That is 37% annualized return on their investment. Obviously, we took that out of contract, so they didn't get all of that. But for the sake of giving you examples and, and what is possible, and also now technically the return is infinite because they are entitled to get equity payments from the cash flow. All right. As long as we own the property, they get equity payments. Now, you don't have to structure the deal that way, but sometimes it makes sense. Depends on the type of deal. Now, on the GP side, we put $0 and earned $2 million in equity. So in this picture, it is a massive win-win for both parts. Now, like I mentioned before, we took the property back over to further improve it. But I wanted to show you the math that why we do what we do. Now, once we refinance or sell, we can break it down for you again and the numbers should be better. Let me bring this back to you because I don't tell you this story just to tell it, right? If you're sitting on single-family rentals right now wondering why why your portfolio isn't moving. This is the model that changes that. All right. You don't need your own capital to do deals like this. You don't need to wait for the capital to come in your bank account. You need to know how to find the right property, structure a deal that works for investors, and execute a business plan that creates real value. Okay. That's what we teach. That's what this channel is built around. If you want to go deeper on how the syndication model actually works, how to raise capital, how to underwrite deals like this Macon, Georgia property, how to build a portfolio without using your own money, I put together a completely free training that walks you through the entire thing. The link is in the description. Would love to see you there. Go check it out. And if this video helped you, hit the like and subscribe button. We break down real deals and real numbers. No fluff, no theory. I'll see you in the next one. God bless.
